Written April 2014
Two slanted walls held just enough space for me to walk through. Standard Gallery Experience told me there was no way I was allowed to enter this sculpture, but the open space was beckoning and I couldn’t help myself. I became Alice tip-toeing with curiosity at the promising barrier of Wonderland. I dipped inside—thinking I would find a dead end—and glided through the labyrinth of adventure.
The walls slanted farther left and inched closer together while my steps quickened with excitement. The next curve sent me running to find quite the opposite of a dead end. A vast, open, circular area pushed me into twirling episode number two. The loops of a distorted figure eight surrounded me. My only thought was, “Am I actually inside a sculpture right now?” I was swept on to more adventuring while my mind was left to catch up.
I escaped through two walls opposite the side I entered with a determination to figure out exactly what was happening with this massive steel situation. I tried to comprehend its shape. Three loops or four? Made out of two pieces of metal or six? It was impossible. It made no sense. It was in charge of the room. My mind could not grasp the structure until I went outside the gallery and looked at a picture of it taken from above.
One thing became clear to me during my time with “Inside Out,” one of Richard Serra’s latest sculptures: I am small. My initial reaction to the sculpture was sensory. It made me conscious of a simple (often forgotten) reality of my existence; that I am 5’ 6” and 115 pounds of flesh and bones. I have a body that plays a major role in what I am.
Even if you’ve never read Plato or Aristotle’s philosophy of mind, you’ve probably experienced the implications of what they call dualism—the notion that the body and mind are disconnected in some way. While philosophers contest this belief, most of us know with a real-world sense that we often feel separated from our own bodies. There’s the time you tried to lose 10 pounds and your hips wouldn’t listen, or the time your stomach pain led you to an awkward regurgitation of your last meal, and let’s not go down the path of labor and childbirth.
The truth is that sometimes our bodies do things without our permission, and this is disorienting. It feels wrong. We wonder to ourselves, what is this thing called ‘my body,’ how much is it apart of who I am, what am I supposed to do with it? This notion—this constant attempt to reconnect with our physical selves—has expressed itself in an art movement that hasn’t lost momentum since its birth in the seventies.
A growing number of artists are using their own bodies to make their artwork. Marc Quinn drains his own blood and freezes it to make sculptures that replicate his form. They sell for about $45,000 each. Marina Abramovic stood stationary for six hours and, without resist, let the audience do anything they wanted to her. These actions included pressing thorns into her stomach, cutting her neck and licking the blood, and making her hold a gun to her own face. Artists like Trisha Brown and Heather Hansen capture bodily movement on a canvas by dancing with charcoal in their fingers and toes. And the list goes on.
Like all art movements, someone had to do it first. In this case, Chris Burden was among the initial in the 70s to use his body in new ways through what he labeled “performance art.” These performances included being shot in the arm with a .22 rifle in Shoot and nailed to the back of a Volkswagen by a colleague in Transfixed.
In various interviews these artists have shared their motivations for such daring actions. Drains His Own Blood wanted his sculptures to be more authentic—and therefore made up of his own substance. Lets People Torture Her wanted to prove to her audience that they as viewers were willing to hurt another human body in horrifying ways. Shot In The Arm talked about the struggle to convince his body that the marksman would only graze his arm with the bullet—that even if his body bled, he would be okay.
Implicit in all these art works is a desire to understand the body and the human relationship with it. There is something about the body that is worth capturing, there is something wrong about hurting it, there is some connection it has with something more than flesh and bones. Thus we find ourselves in 2014 with artists like Millie Brown who drinks colored soymilk and vomits it onto canvas.
Brown performs this act and then sells the product which is reported to be sold for anywhere from $2,000 to $20,000 (although she also sells them from her personal Instagram account for $100). Her latest performances leave the highbrow art world and unfold on stage at Lady Gaga’s SXSW concert. The two rode a mechanical bull together while Brown vomited on Gaga’s white apron. Several publications and raging tweeters accused Brown of glamorizing disorders like bulimia. However, Brown rejected this claim and said to The Guardian, “I wanted to use my body to create art. I wanted it to truly come from within.”
This previous soul-related phrase gone literal brings a new exploration of the body to an age-old desire to connect with our own flesh. If body and spirit are one, it sure doesn’t always feel that way to all of us confused-and-disoriented human types. These artists seem to be asking the question: just what are we supposed to do with this fleshy shell we are walking around in? In the case of “vomit painter” Millie Brown, she wants to use it to make something beautiful. She told E! in March 2014,
“It [started] when I was 17… I started exploring performance art and it was an idea that came to be because I wanted to use my body to create a performance that was about the beauty from inside out. I came up with the idea of actually vomiting a rainbow using my body as a tool to create paintings. It’s also about the whole process of the painting. Obviously the paintings themselves can be beautiful or not, but the whole process behind it is what interested me.”
There she is. A 27-year-old artist from London, who spent her teenage years rummaging abandoned buildings with French street punks, continues her artistic journey. Dressed in all black in an all white room, she pops. Her platform spiky pumps cause her to walk in an uncomfortable, flat-footed manner. Her reddish-brown hair is tucked away on top of her head. Any present eardrums sway to the sound of classical opera music sung by two bystanders in the background. The only color in the room lives in eight, tall clear cups on the floor, clinging to the liquid soymilk inside. Blue, yellow, green, purple—Brown sits in a white chair and contemplates which color she will use first.
After a somber saunter towards the yellow glass of milk, she picks it up and carries it back to her chair where she convinces it to glide past the entrance of her deadpan expression and down her throat to permeate her insides. Moments later she returns the empty cup to its home and carries the same blank-faced sauntering to the white canvas on the floor. Her fingers are in her mouth. Far. Her knees are bent. Her back is arched. Her head is perching on top of her shoulders. She gags a little and then it happens. Explosive yellow liquid travels out her stomach, through her small intestine, up her esophagus, past her throat, down her tongue and into your startled vision before splattering on the canvas.
What just happened?
That’s right. She puked her art. She used the inner-workings of her fleshy shell to make a drip painting. And she’s about to repeat the process with three more colors before the masterpiece is complete. Before the regurgitated liquid blends together in a glamorized form resembling the product of those carnival games where kids pop paint-filled water balloons with darts.
Brown and her contemporary colleagues are not the first to consider the role the body plays in creating art. Artists have been forever exploring what the body looks like. Matisse and his Blue Nude come to mind as one of the first provocateurs in this area. Since the 15th century, many artists have tried their hand at the reclining nude image, but Matisse incorporates imaginative colors, bold lines, and contorted body posing to make this image one of the most controversial at the first Armory Show in 1913. The woman is placed in an exotic, jungle-like, colorful environment whereas most reclining nudes are inside a bedroom or living space. Bright shades of blues, pinks and greens capture the viewer’s interest. The reclining woman has short black hair and her body is twisted—exposing her breasts while hiding the lower half of her body.
Most Matisse paintings direct strong attention to the line of the figure (take any of Matisse’s Dance images for example). The same is true of the Blue Nude. Many of the woman’s features are blurry and “unfinished” by the Academy standards of the early 19th century. For example, the fingers and toes are not distinguishable from each other. Her hair is short and choppy and her facial features are unrealistic—almost cartoonish. However, one thing is clear about this woman is her form. Thick, bold shades of black and blue follow her outline, showing the viewer where exactly the edges of her body rest.
These lines tell the viewer something explicit about this human body. As a viewer, I don’t have the option to interpret the beauty of this woman because Matisse did it for me. Even though this isn’t a picture of a real woman, he showed me exactly where her curves turn, exactly where she ends and the jungle begins, exactly what shape her form takes. And in turn: exactly what shape my form takes as I relate to the transcendent realities of having a young female body like this woman does.
This fascination with the body has since trickled its way to us through the Jackson Pollock types of the early 20th century where the focus shifted from what the body looks like to what the body does. Pollock canvases were not radical because they were extra beautiful or extra difficult to create. Pollock created his pieces while standing up, spinning around, or hanging from the ceiling. The creation of art was not a stationary act anymore—the body played a new role. Now imagine, if you can, the freshness of Pollock’s methods slipping further and further back in history and being replaced with new artistic roles for the body, each a little more outrageous than the last. Matisse is no longer shocking. Pollock is no longer unique. Like a creeping addiction, the fourth and fifth encounter has to push the limit just a little more than the first and second.
And so goes the flow for the body’s role in art creation. It’s curving, winding, bending, and maintaining one common thread of better-than-the-last provocation and another of what-do-I-do-with-this-body. A human, unsatisfied subject stays alive but changes form until it finds itself on stage with Millie Brown—still trying to shed light on a dusty corner of reality, to remind us just how much we can’t escape our own bodies.
As a witness (via Youtube) to Brown’s performance, I think of how Serra reminded me that my body is small, Matisse that it has a distinct form, Pollock that it is not stationary, and now Brown that it pukes. Brown reminds me that the body isn’t always pretty. It does weird things.
TWO
As you may have guessed, Brown’s performances stir up controversy in the pop culture world. While she hasn’t gained much ground with galleries or collectors, her fans come from a young, grass roots crowd. Since her collaboration with Gaga, their fan crowds have taken on similar types. The same kinds of Gaga concert-goers are impressed and inspired by Brown’s performances. They affirm her overall style in tweets and Instagram comments like “Wow this is SO cool” and “Can I send you fan mail?” In terms of artistic presence, her videos and finished canvases are more interesting and influential. However, nothing is truer of pop culture than the fact that there are more people at the Gaga performance (or at least reading the article about it) than there are in the Chelsea gallery on Tuesday night. Furthermore, Brown herself if more concerned with the “performance” aspect of her artwork.
Brown has not been open about her plans for her future in the art world other than sharing with Elle Magazine that she likes to take on projects that challenge her artistic faculties in a mental and physical way. While the distinction between being a part of the sophisticated artsy world or the mass-mob teenage concert world may be a pressing issue in some minds, it doesn’t seem to be among Brown’s concerns. No matter what kind of art it is, the important thing to note is that people are paying attention to her.
As she rides the Gaga wave, Brown appears in various news interviews, multiple front page headlines, articles on websites like Ripley’s Believe it or Not!, and even on several Buzzfeed pages. There is no doubt that her connection with a famous pop star has popularized her painting methods and her approach to performance art. But Brown says she chooses to work with Gaga because they have similar artistic visions. Gaga understands and supports Brown’s work. While the provocative artist has a decent fan base, she also has her fair share of criticizers. Brown told several news sources, like Beautiful/Decay, that she has received hate mail and even death threats.
At the center of mainstream criticism of the new innovative (often repulsive at first) art forms that are put forth by the Matisses, the Pollocks and now Brown is the same question: is this art? According to, a different kind of mainstream performance artist, Demi Lovato, the answer in Brown’s case is NO. Lovato started controversy when she tweeted moments after the SXSW performance, “Sad…As if we didn’t have enough people glamorizing eat disorders already. Bottom line, it’s not ‘cool’ or ‘artsy’ at all,” and shortly after, “Putting the word ART in it isn’t a free card to do whatever you want without consequences.”
Brown responds to these accusations in Bullet Media with,
“We didn’t glamorize anything. All of my performances are meant to inspire viewers to question the concept of classic beauty and femininity, rather than perpetuate those standards girls and women are faced with every day; the ones that cause eating disorders in the first place! … My work rebels against those standards! I do understand how it could be triggering to some, but as an artist I can’t censor myself to keep everyone happy.”
It makes sense that Lovato, who has struggled with body image issues, would be repulsed by Brown’s work. However, no matter how repulsive, isn’t Brown’s work doing something that all provocative art in this area should do: it is begging for an answer to the questions “What is Beauty? What role does the body play in art creation?” and people are eager to answer. Brown intended to start a conversation and she was successful. Although, Lovato makes a fair point with that follow-up tweet. The artist is not always (if ever) in control of the effect their art has on viewers. In Brown’s case, she doesn’t even have control of what her finished products look like.
Brown has reassured all interested news sources that she takes good care of her body throughout this process. She takes month-long breaks in between performances, she does a two day cleanse before each regurgitation act, and she sticks to a healthy, vegan diet.
Whether it was her intention or not, didn’t she stand up on a stage in front of thousands of people in sexy outfits with famous pop stars and engage in the raw, unfiltered act of forcing herself to vomit? Didn’t she also create multiple videos of regurgitating bright, attractive colors onto pure white canvas and then describe the action as a human cleansing, purifying experience? And isn’t it possible that this act reached the eyes of some struggling fourteen-year-old girl who felt affirmed and beautiful and artistic in her self-destruction? It’s possible. Even if she didn’t intend to, Brown glamorized bulimia for some viewers.
This is the risk involved in almost any art form: once it’s out there in the world, it’s open for interpretation. It’s settled in reality—ready to be understood in a myriad of ways through the millions of eyes that hold millions of stories that understand the world in millions of ways. It’s not ridiculous that some of those stories include eating disorders and their combination with Brown’s artwork made some people angry. That’s what makes new, provocative art tricky—once it leaves the artists mind (and body), all the other minds and bodies on this earth have to make sense of it somehow.
This risk should not inhibit Brown and other artists from sharing their work, but it is a cold, unimpassioned reality of the true art process that must not be forgotten. Brown maintains an outward commitment to freedom of expression in art. After the Gaga show she tweeted, “I believe in absolute freedom of expression. Challenging perceptions of art and beauty. If art is your communication, it should not be censored.
Which brings us back to the same question: is this art? Several news sources likened Brown’s vomit paintings with Pollock’s drip painting series. If we are going to make this comparison (in an attempt to do the impossible task of answering the question “what is art?”) there are several differences in the artist’s processes that we cannot forget without being labeled art blasphemers. Brown and Pollock both found new ways to use the body to create art, but that is their only similarity.
First, the effect of her art on viewers is not the only thing that Brown doesn’t have complete control over. She also doesn’t have full control over how her paintings look. She told Elle magazine that the outcome of her paintings is a “very uncontrollable element.” She has a rough idea of what it might look like, and she picks the colors (blue is her favorite), but she can’t control her own body (while vomiting) and therefore she can’t control how the painting looks either. This is why she likes vomit painting. Brown is more concerned with the process behind making the art than what the finished product looks like.
Pollock, on the other hand, was tedious and strategic in the outcome of his paintings. He was known for being meticulous in calculating patterns for each piece. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard people at MoMA (or even thought to myself), “I could probably make that” while gazing at Autumn Rhythm. But Pollock’s works were genius because they looked exactly how he intended them to look, while still appearing graceful and effortless. Which brings me to my next point: Brown and Pollock’s painting don’t look anything alike.
Brown’s finished products look much like someone dropped a paint ball from above—wide splashes that cover large surfaces. In addition, the runny aspect of colored soymilk causes the colors to move and blend on the canvas for some period after it splats. The vibrant colors take hold of a vast surface area before trickling out at the edges, resembling something like a child’s television show (I’m thinking of that big, orange blob that used to introduce Nickelodeon shows in the nineties). But Pollock’s finished works take on a different form. The combinations of thin black, brown, and white lines evoke both order and chaos on the tan canvases. Less splats and more sleek drips make up the gigantic space that Pollock filled. The paint falls where he wants it to and it stays there.
If those distinctions didn’t point out enough of a chasm between Brown and Pollack, all we have to do is look at their influence. Brown’s fans are just not the kind that will like to admire Autumn Rhythm’s on balmy Sunday afternoons at a museum. In fact, they aren’t even art lovers in particular. They are young hipster teens that release their angst by wrapping themselves with controversial forms of expression that will provoke their parents. Pollock fans are paying attention and participating in art conversation. Brown fans are following each other into Gaga concerts and forming Instagram crushes.
I do not intend to disapprove of one or the other type of fan. As an undergrad studying art, I often find myself bouncing back and forth between these two dispositions—grasping at sophistication in glimpses that get longer as I become older. Here we are talking about the difference between highbrow and popular culture. The two artists are almost incomparable for the mere fact that they exist in different spheres.
Even though it might be too complicated to look at Brown’s work and discuss whether it is art or not, we can ask ourselves if it is good for humanity. Is it bad for humans to participate in the practices involved with supporting this vomit art and this vomit artist? Because whether you like it or not, Brown is turning heads, attracting attention, and a lot of people love her work. What kinds of people do we become when our favorite painter pukes her artwork?
Part of the answer to this question lies in Brown’s assessment of her work, and she has some appropriate opinions. Brown said to Daily Mail, “By creating art from the very depths of my own physical being I am able to challenge people’s perception of beauty, expressing raw elements of human nature and in turn challenging myself both physically and mentally.” And what is art for but to encourage people to think about beauty and human nature? Brown also told Elle Magazine, “I’ve seen a lot of positive and negative reactions to my work. I think they’re both equally as important because it’s causing people to really think about what art and freedom of expression means.” She is successful in this challenge if only for the very reason that I just spent hours writing about it and you just read it all.
Even if you disagree with Brown’s approach, even if you think it inspires poor body image, even if you think it’s not art or it doesn’t approach beauty, is it really that awful that she caused us to stop and think about those things? Is it really that awful that she used vibrant colors and a bizarre scenario to remind us of this horrifying thing that our body does without our mind’s permission? Regurgitation. And the strong reaction is just what Brown wants from us viewers—what most artists want. They want to connect with people, challenge them, tell them something about their existence in a fresh way.
Brown is successful by her own standards because she used the body in a new way, created something using the uncontrollable elements of her body, and she caused people to contemplate beauty in the process. As it goes with the art world, how will we know if this is really life-shaping, transcendent beauty until we step 50 or 100 years into the future and see which walls these puked paintings are hanging on? No one thought Matisse would ever be famous at first. But here he is—hundreds of years later—telling me about my own form. Who’s to say that Brown won’t be telling tomorrow’s generation how their innards work, how “beautiful” or “improperly glamorizing” it is to literally create something that comes from within?
When I first heard of Brown’s work, I thought it was ridiculous. If some girl can just puke on a canvas and call it art, then I can be an artist too. Anything can be art at that point. But once you insert her into the narrative of the evolution of art and painting and the history of the role the body has played in art, an I-could-do-that mentality is mere naiveté. Brown is a popular culture performance painter with a different approach to the creation of art. What’s so bad about that? In the words of Pollock himself, “The modern artist is working with space and time, and expressing his feelings rather than illustrating… Abstract painting is abstract. It confronts you. There was a reviewer a while back who wrote that my pictures didn’t have any beginning or any end. He didn’t mean it as a compliment, but it was.”
Rebecca carlen calhoun 